Hello everyone, l just had a question or wish to stir up a discussion.

Recently when checking out my websites statistics (via awestats) it has an attribute for "estimated bookmarks"
and shows a percentage of users that bookmark my site.

I was just curious if there is a php, or perl script that can record how many people bookmark my page.

any help would be greatly appreciated!

Samantha Gram

Noodles24

11-26-2005, 11:22 AM

I'm guessing awstats looks at the logs and counts how many times favicon.ico is downloaded, but I think this method is outdated as most browsers these days download this to display in the address bar. I think it's impossible to calculate this as it's all done with on the client side without any information being sent to the server

mark87

11-26-2005, 03:23 PM

Yea not possible I'm afraid.

The only way to do it would be to have a link 'bookmark this page' etc - then when they click it, do something with a php script to alert you they've bookmarked it, and then redirect them to the javascript which would bookmark the page.

A very messy solution though - user would need javascript enabled, and they would need to click the link to alert you, not just add to the favourites from the menu; and if they clicked the link then refused to add the page - you would still be alerted.

Perhaps (although not really a good idea) you could add a simple poll to the page asking users if they've bookmarked?

I realise you are starting a discussion not asking how to do it though, and I have no idea how the stats page can estimate bookmarkings!

Coastal Web

11-27-2005, 03:10 AM

Ahhh, the favicon.. that makes perfectly good sense. Thanks for the replies both of you! I had figured one way to do it would be to create a "click here to bookmark" this page link and then record the info into a database with php, and cough up the javascript:window.external.AddFavorite() function but this like you'd suggested is messy and probably wouldn't be used all to often when someone did decide to bookmark me.

I thought l had read in the past that there is a way to get a list of someone's favorites/bookmarks via javascript in the past... exploit perhaps(?)... if that were the case l'd be able to write a script that would thumb through the users bookmarks looking for my domain. But again this is a pretty dirty tactic that l wouldn't like someone pulling on me.

Thanks for kicking around your ideas with me guys.

Samantha Gram

mark87

11-27-2005, 12:03 PM

There was an exploit if I remember correctly, yes; but it's patched now I suspect.

Favicon is downloaded whenever a person views the page anyway so it wouldn't be able to tell you how many people bookmark the page. :)

Snetty

11-28-2005, 07:14 PM

I'd have thought the easiest way of finding this out is to view your "Referrals", it shows where people have come from. Of course, it'll also show people that appear to have come from no-where, those are the people that have bookmarked you, and also those coming from links in emails, irc etc. But it's probably the best estimate possible.

felgall

11-28-2005, 07:53 PM

Referrals from nowhere also include anyone with the referrer field turned off in their browser or firewall. It also includes anyone using IE who comes from a secure page. Also anyone who types the address of the page into their address bar.

codeteacher

11-29-2005, 03:06 PM

Perhaps it would be a possibility to record keys with javascript (and send it to a form which sends it to php > db) when someone presses CTRL-D (bookmark) :)

mark87

11-29-2005, 03:15 PM

Perhaps it would be a possibility to record keys with javascript (and send it to a form which sends it to php > db) when someone presses CTRL-D (bookmark) :)

How many people do you know who actually bookmark pages like that? :)

...As said, there's little ways to see who possibly bookmarks, but none of them are fail-proof.